Our Faculty

David Chavkin

Professor David Chavkin in conjunction with other faculty, students, and staff helped organize a protest and sponsor a vigil when WCL was forced to allow the military to recruit on campus. WCL had previously barred military recruiters due to the military's discriminatory "don't ask, don't tell policy." The enforcement of the Solomon Amendment, passed by Congress, would withhold important federal student aid from schools that do not allow the military to recruit on campus.

"If we had a recruiter who said "We won't hire anyone who's black," there's no doubt about us kicking them off campus. The notion that we should treat discrimination against our gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender students as different is an outrage."

Darren Hutchinson

Professor Darren Hutchinson joined the faculty in 2003, and was appointed full professor in 2005. His areas of expertise include constitutional law, and Equal Protection Theory and equitable remedies. Before joining the faculty at WCL, Professor Hutchinson was an Associate Professor at Southern Methodist University School of Law, and prior to law teaching, Professor Hutchinson practiced commercial litigation at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton in New York City. He also clerked for the late Honorable Mary Johnson Lowe, a former United States District Judge in the Southern District of New York.

Professor Hutchinson has written and spoken on many issues affecting LGBT individuals, including the U.S. Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale and the intersections of racial and sexual identities and politics. For more information, please visit Professor Hutchinson's blog.

Binny Miller

Professor Binny Miller assists the lesbian and gay legal community in a variety of ways. She consults with attorneys at the Whitman Walker Clinic, the local lesbian and gay health clinic, about criminal matters the clinic's clients face. Professor Miller also conducts workshops at national conferences about integrating lesbian and gay issues into the curriculum of law school clinics. She has published an article entitled "Give Them Back Their Lives: Recognizing Client Narrative in Case Theory," 93 Michigan Law Review 485 (1994) which discusses the role that sexual orientation plays in case theory development. Prof. Miller regularly hosts the hospitality suite for lesbian and gay applicants at the annual law professor hiring conference.

Anthony Varona

Professor Anthony Varona teaches Contracts, Administrative Law, Media Law, and Introduction to Public Law, and serves as the faculty director of the S.J.D. Program. Before joining the WCL faculty, he was an associate professor of law at Pace Law School in New York. Before that, he served as general counsel and legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay civil rights organization. He built HRC's legal department, directed its legislative, regulatory, and appellate amicus work, launched national law fellow and pro bono attorney programs, and served as counsel to HRC's board of directors and the organization's corporate, educational, and media initiatives.

Professor Varona taught as an adjunct law professor for three years at Georgetown University, and served as a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School. He serves on the board of directors of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and is a member of the Society of American Law Teachers and the Hispanic Bar Association of Washington. He has served on the boards of the Human Rights Campaign and the Alliance for Justice, was on the New York Advisory Board for the American Constitution Society, was founding chairperson of the AIDS Action Council's Legal Advisory Board, and served as a member of the Judicial Selection Steering Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Professor Varona's scholarship has included articles concerning civil rights, employment discrimination, hate crimes, and communications law, published in law reviews associated with the College of William & Mary, the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota, and Catholic, Georgetown and Stanford Universities. He has lectured widely on these topics, and has appeared as a legal commentator on CNN, Headline News, Fox News Network, Court TV, MSNBC, and in a variety of major daily newspapers and legal periodicals.